Image by McDonalds

June is Pride Month (in honour of the 1969 Stonewall riots, which first sparked the gay rights movement). For a long time, the month has been closely associated with Pride parades, rainbow flags and LGBTQ rights. However, in recent years, June has also become the month when brands push LGBTQ-themed marketing campaigns.

While LGBTQ-targeted campaigns have been around for some time, it feels like most brands have now lost fear of expressing their views on social matters, and are letting go of unauthentic pink-washing to come out in full support for the community – from McDonalds’ rainbow French fry boxes, to Coca-Cola’s 2017 ‘Pool Boy’ commercial.

The list is long: Instagram has rolled out a special set of Pride features, including a rainbow brush; Equinox is exploring the LGBTQ-alphabet (it seems a lot of people get confused with the acronym); Just Salad has released its LGBTQ-themed ‘Big Gay Garden Salad’, and there are plenty of others.

Below you’ll find three of what we think are some of the most interesting LGBTQ-themed campaigns this year.

Coca-Cola (Brazil)

Brazilians (not all of them!) have long used the phrase ‘Essa coca é Fanta’, which can be translated into ‘This coke is actually Fanta’, to pejoratively question someone’s sexual orientation. So in a very clever move, Coca-Cola decided to leverage the popular saying to promote diversity and LGBTQ pride.

It has replaced the liquid inside cans of coke with Fanta, and challenged consumers with the following message written on packaging: ‘This coke is actually Fanta. So what?’.

The campaign was first trialed internally with employees, but it has gained so much traction due to so many people sharing photos of cans on social media platforms, as well all the PR it has received, that Coca-Cola is rolling out the campaign across the entire country, and may adapt it to other markets too.

Image by Coca-Cola Brasil

Skittles (UK)

While the majority of brands were busy finding ways to incorporate rainbows into their branding, Skittles has stood out by abandoning its usual rainbow look and adopting an all-white alternative in celebration of Pride. The idea was that in June, there’s only one rainbow that truly matters.

The limited-edition Skittles has taken over social media, with lots of people reacting by saying they’ve loved the initiative, and that they were also having fun trying to guess the actual flavours of the white lentils inside the pack.

Image by Skittles UK

Barba Men’s Grooming Boutique (USA)

Hair salons have always been some of the most LGBTQ-friendly public spaces. This year, US-based men’s grooming shop Barba has decided to show support for transgender men and women: during Pride month, customers wanting to help in raising awareness for the community could get their hair dyed blue, pink and white (the colours of the transgender flag) for free – even Marc Jacobs took advantage of the offer.

We find this campaign very interesting because of its amplification potential which goes far beyond social media – customers not only shared photos of their new hairstyle on their own channels (which helped raising awareness for both the transgender community and the salon), but also strolled around for days showcasing, as well as talking about the initiative to everyone who’s asked.

Image by Barba Men’s Grooming Boutique

Image by Sephora

Missouri was recently invited to give a presentation to an ISBA group, about the ‘changing face of retail’. Here’s a short summary of what we talked about:

A change of pace in customer expectation has brought unprecedented challenges for retailers in recent years and shows no signs of slacking off. In a multi-channel world of smart technologies, fast and furious pace of life and high levels of competition, retailers and brands are all thinking outside the box and fashioning fresh tactics. You need to be smarter than ever to maintain relevance, not just by stepping outside the box, but by pulling apart the walls to reshape it completely.

Despite the doom-mongering, stores are succeeding; according to econsultancy, 84 per cent of retail sales still take place in store and of the 16 per cent of online transactions, 66 per cent are made following a store visit.

Retailers are rising to the challenge of the demand to shop anytime, anywhere, reaching inflated expectations of service levels. We’re seeing a fast-adapting face of retail with disruption rife and many are disrupting traditional models; Tesla eschewed sales-led ‘big box’ dealerships for brand-building experiences in shopping centres, and Sneakerboy opened stock-free experience stores in Melbourne with online ordering. Even online retailers are disrupting new ecommerce models with bricks and mortar stores that combine the best of physical and digital retail to cater for evolving customer demands.

Image by Sneakerboy Australia

Many retailers are forging stronger connections with customers by curating experiences – going beyond displaying and selling products, to become community hubs and places of entertainment, exploration and discovery.

Others are focusing on ‘real-time retail’. Taking a leaf from the book of digital and reflecting non-linear paths to purchase, they’re creating dynamic experiences that respond to individual customer demands through flexible formats, instant access to service and information, and collection of data and connectivity. Electronic communication enables immediate attention in an environment that responds to factors such as time of day, day of week, weather and customer feedback.

Smart technology is being used to create more innovative stores and increase engagement between brand and consumer; they can identify individual customers’ expectations to streamline paths to purchase, personalise experiences and rewards, and reduce the effort involved in accessing discounts.

Far from diminishing the role of the physical store to acquire and guide a sustained relationship between customers and brands, we see technology accentuating opportunities to connect with brands and facilitate purchase.

These are exciting times for retailers. With opportunities to win and to retain more customers beckoning for those that create smart stores omni-channel experiences, the physical store will remain of central importance in the delivery of brand promises.

Our presentation contains over 20 inspiring, innovative and informative examples. We’ve told you the story here but true to our mantra, we’d love to show you real-life examples.

Every year, Design Week Top 100 provides a holistic and detailed analysis of the financial state of the design industry in the UK – ranking the country’s most successful independent design businesses based on total fee income, growth rate, turnover, projections and staffing levels.

We’re very pleased that 2016’s list marks the debut of Missouri Creative at #64 – less than a year after winning ‘Design and Branding Consultancy of the Year’ at the Drum Marketing Awards.

This is excellent news for us. Missouri Creative was only established in 2013, and we’re one of just two consultancies to enter the Top 100 for the first time this year.